Oceans Passing Critical CO2 Threshold

Perhaps we would be far better off decreasing our beef consumption and and get rid of a whole whack of cows, as well as planting more trees, and getting off of the fossil fuel addiction. What was it I last heard, something around 1/3 of CO2 emissions were from cows and their expelled gases? Of course they could stop holding wars too, that would help a great deal.

However, unless the world is placed under marshall law and billions of people slaughtered, there is not going to be any pre-industrilization type of civilization happening anytime soon.

___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"

What is taking place in most of the world is neither industrial nor pre-industrial but it is truly horrible. Humanity has already turned in upon itself and is eating itself from the inside out. From the demonic violence of the Congo, to the fascistic. racist violence of Israel, to the fetishism of Western violence, and every place on earth from Somalia, to Zimbabwe, to Haiti, to Mexico, and all places in between where human suffering directly results from official policy or with the tacit approval of domestic and foreign governments. We are a species intent on destroying the planet for our depravity.

Can't say I disagree, however, what is the real action you would like taken FM?

___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"

As was stated in the opening post and has been mentioned by many. Keep the carbon (fossil fuels) in the ground.

Without fossil fuel our over consumption, be it meat or consumer goods, will very likely decline rapidly, since many of these products become much more expensive to produce and maintain.

Not quite.  The greenhouse gas emitted by cows is methane, which is even more efficient than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas (see, effiency is not always a good thing ).  

 Ocean chemistry isn't all that simple.  Most of the carbon in the ocean is carbonate or bicarbonate (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle)

 I have been looking at extracting large quantities of carbon from the ocean by growing algae, turning it to charcoal, and extracting the carbon and piling it up.  A friend of mine referred to this as demining coal.  I think the trick would be to recycle the nutrients since the volumes involved make single pass prohibitively expensive.

jr states:

 I have been looking at extracting large quantities of carbon from the ocean by growing algae, turning it to charcoal, and extracting the carbon and piling it up.  A friend of mine referred to this as demining coal.  I think the trick would be to recycle the nutrients since the volumes involved make single pass prohibitively expensive.

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Didn't I hear of others growing an edible algae? 

That might be preferable - if it can be given a beef-like flavour - although I'm not sure where you were going on the "nutrients." And speed up your research, please.

If you do anything with CO2 other than pile it up as coal (or some other stable solution) it eventually goes back into the atmosphere.  Closed loop is better than extracting fossils, but I think we need to actively extract CO2 at this point.

 The nutrients are what you need to feed the algae besides CO2.  Nitrates and phosphates and stuff.  If you are trying to stash gigatonnes of coal you need gigatonnes of nutrients, which isn't really available, so you have to recycle it at a very high level of effiency (this time it's good ).

jrootham, though whats you say is very interesting, I am afraid it is beyond my understanding of what you are meaning in respect to algare?

___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"

Aside from cow farts and even discounting the forest cleared away to make room for cattle farming, the amount of sheer energy it takes to grow, butcher, transport, and package the meat you eat is astronomical. In terms of lifestyle changes there is nothing you could do that will have one tenth the effect of going vegetarian. Anyone concerned about the fallout from our rampant fossil fuel consumption should give up meat immediately as a mere initial step to creating a sustainable civilisation.